Category Archives: Toys

Don’t be fooled by the fact that it’s sold at reputable baby retailers such as Buy Buy Baby, Pottery Barn Kids, and Amazon. You might think that this adorable, chic “teether” that you are convinced you have to have as soon as you become pregnant is for your baby.

You would be wrong.

I am now convinced this teether is actually the world’s greatest marketing ploy of all time by a dog toy manufacturer to offload an overabundance of rubber squeaky giraffes to unsuspecting, hormonal mothers who will think that an adorable box with French on it and a cute story about a little factory in the French countryside making their own perfect rubber formula since the 1950s for children to teethe their perfect little French baby teeth upon will sell these little rubber giraffes en masse.

Whoever realized this potential market for an overproduction of giraffe dog toys is a genius.

Sophie is one of those registry items that appears on almost everyone’s registry magically, even if they don’t specifically remember registering for it. I think the fact that the toy is adorable helps the cause immensely. You are immediately brought back to imagining a simpler time with more adorable toys that your grandmother might have played with before walking uphill both ways in the snow to school. Perhaps teething on this adorable French giraffe will create a cultured, art-loving, bilingual child, you think to yourself. Images of your child with a chef’s hat cooking up gourmet 5-course meals at the age of 6 flash across your hormonal eyes. This is it, you think, this is the key to motherhood.

What they don’t tell you is that Sophie la Giraffe, in all her adorable retro-chic French countryside rubber, is the only toy my dog has ever wanted or will ever want in his entire existence.

Forget gourmet-cooking bilingual children, what’s actually in that special French countryside rubber is dog crack.

My general problem is that my fur baby (dog) and I have been together for over six and a half years. Almost every toy that has been brought into the house has been brought with the sole purpose of furthering his enjoyment and happiness in life, and whether that happiness is achieved by tearing said toy to bits within five minutes or by hoarding it for a year as his own personal security toy is completely up to him. How am I supposed to explain to him that all of a sudden these toys that look almost identical to every other toy he has ever been given are suddenly “off limits” because of a (as of yet) nonexistent being that is coming to live with us in a few months? You can’t, that’s how. If I can’t understand it, my dog shouldn’t be expected to, either.

I have been fairly successful in hiding the toys that are for Wee Connor away from the dog, and, generally, he’s been uninterested in them. Except for Sophie. Sophie makes me realize what a Border Collie he actually is with his obsessive-compulsive memory and attention span that is longer than 90% of adults’. There is something about her that makes him go insane, and were it not for a $23 price tag, I would probably just give her to him. At the moment, my attitude is that $23 is too much money to just go out and buy another Sophie, but seeing as that appears to be the inevitable outcome, I have decided that Sophie la Giraffe is officially the single most expensive dog toy to ever be created.